Recent Projects

In August 2024, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a Draft Integrated Material Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement as part of its Lower Columbia River Channel Maintenance Plan. In the EIS the Corps cited values for the social cost of greenhouse gases (SC-GHG) from the calculator on Policy Integrity’s Cost of Carbon Website. The Corps also citied our Cost of Carbon website when describing the SC-GHG in the Draft EIS.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers recently proposed a rule to return to the pre-2015 definition of the term “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. We submitted comments encouraging the agencies to more fully elucidate the benefits from the proposed regulation, as the current economic analysis understates the rule's positive environmental effects.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have expressed the intention to repeal the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which removed critical federal protections on many waterways and has been vacated by a federal court for violating the Clean Water Act. In comments filed to the agencies, we welcome the decision to replace the rule but encourage strong justification for reversing course and point to flaws in the economic analysis for the earlier rule that can support the case for replacing it.

We previously commented on the rule and its flawed economic justification, published a report on its concealed costs, and filed amicus briefs in court cases that challenged it.

We submitted joint comments on the Army Corps of Engineers’ environmental assessment of the Pebble Mine Project in southwest Alaska. The Corps quantifies greenhouse gas emissions from the project but fails to provide a monetized estimate of the climate damages those emissions will produce.

We submitted comments to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) on recent draft environmental impact statements (EISs), in which we stressed the importance of addressing climate impacts of proposed projects.

President Trump’s recent executive order on energy disbands the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (IWG) and withdraws its technical support documents that underpin the IWG’s range of estimates. Instead, the executive order directs federal agencies to continue to monetize the social cost of carbon emissions pursuant to the Office of Management and Budget’s Circular A-4. In our comments, we highlight that the range of estimates from the IWG that agencies have been using, including the number used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, is consistent with Circular A-4 and therefore, consistent with the executive order.